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PharmD students place 1st in 2023-2024 Value of Industry Pharmacists (VIP) Case Competition
By Suzan Revah / Wed Apr 10, 2024
For the second year in a row, a team of UCSF PharmD students achieved the top spot in the Value of Industry Pharmacists (VIP) Case Competition, presented by the Industry Pharmacists Organization (IPhO) and the National Fellows Council (NFC).
UCSF’s student chapter of IPhO was selected from 66 pharmacy school teams across the nation in the annual professional development competition, which gives pharmacy students deeper knowledge––from the perspective of an industry pharmacist––of key functional areas required to bring a novel molecule to market.
Each team participating in the months-long event works toward creating a cohesive product development plan, along with a presentation showcasing the drug profile. By the end of the competition, student pharmacists understand the vital role pharmacists play in clinical development, regulatory affairs, medical affairs, and marketing.
The competition also fosters leadership development as the student pharmacists improve their analytical, project management, and written and oral presentation skills. At UCSF, the competition is conducted alongside a student elective course, taught by second-year PharmD students Kiana Hocutt and Amy Xiao with Leslie Carstensen Floren, PharmD, PhD, MA, as faculty advisor.
“Throughout the competition, we are able to form valuable connections with our industry mentors and develop skills critical for success in our future career paths,” said Kiana Hocutt, Class of ’25, a cocoordinator of the UCSF team. “The disease state for our mock drug candidate this year, obesity, presented distinct challenges, given the dynamic nature of the therapeutic area. We were able to navigate them while incorporating information from publications, clinical trial results, and product approvals as they were released to the public.”
"We are very thankful to our mentors, who so generously donated their time to provide feedback,” said Amy Xiao, Class of ’25, also a cocoordinator of the UCSF team. “I want to encourage students in the future to participate. It was incredibly rewarding to develop a feasible (theoretical) drug product and strategy, teach the competition elective, and provide constructive criticism while delving into how the clinical knowledge we learn here at UCSF can be implemented in drug development."
Winning team
First- and second-year PharmD students from the UCSF School of Pharmacy who participated in the competition and elective:
Team Cocoordinators
-
Amy Xiao
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Kiana Hocutt
Clinical Development
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Kathryn LeMoine
-
Imad Din
-
Longan Su
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Jenny Hu
-
Arnav Rastogi
Regulatory Affairs
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Sharon Huang
-
Colleen Leung
-
Janny Zhang
Medical Affairs
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Jennifer Nguyen
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Maxim Johnson
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Aneet Dhillon
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Han Dinh
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Wendy Xie
Marketing
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Zunaira Iftikhar
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Keya Patel
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Cindy Chang
-
Sammy Nguyen
Industry mentors
Mentor |
Organization |
---|---|
Ann Chen, PharmD |
Gilead Sciences |
Danh Huynh, PharmD |
Gilead Sciences |
Engie Salama, PharmD |
Xencor |
Scott Bull, PharmD |
Janssen |
Judy Wu, PharmD, MS |
Intuitive |
Sharon Sakai, PhD |
Tempest Therapeutics |
Eric Pinashin, PharmD |
Abbott |
Iris Tam, PharmD |
COEUS |
Michelle Bretschneider, PharmD |
Myovant Sciences |
Alan Chan, PharmD |
EMD Serono |
Kevin Kim, PharmD |
ZS |
Margrit Rosado, PharmD |
Arcellx |
Ryan Thaliffdeen, PharmD, RPh, MS |
Gilead Sciences |
Disease state mentors
Mentor | Organization |
---|---|
Ayca Erkin-Çakmak, MD, MPH | UCSF Pediatric Obesity Clinic |
Andrew Folick, MD, PhD | SFGH Endocrinology Clinic |
Faculty advisor
Leslie Carstensen Floren, PharmD, PhD, MA
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School of Pharmacy
About the School: The UCSF School of Pharmacy aims to solve the most pressing health care problems and strives to ensure that each patient receives the safest, most effective treatments. Our discoveries seed the development of novel therapies, and our researchers consistently lead the nation in NIH funding. The School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program, with its unique emphasis on scientific thinking, prepares students to be critical thinkers and leaders in their field.